Similar to DirectX 10, DirectX 11 will be available only on Windows Vista and future versions of Microsoft’s operating system. DirectX 11 will add new compute shader technology that Microsoft says will allow GPUs to be used “for more than just 3D graphics,” allowing developers to utilize video cards as parallel processors.

DirectX 11 will support tessellation, a feature which can potentially assist developers in making models appear smoother when seen up close. Multi-threaded resource handling is also incorporated, making it easier for games to utilize multi-core processors in a user’s machine.